Who We Are

Samara Hawthorn is a grandmother, elder, and traditional birthkeeper who has spent close to three decades living in deep communion with the land. As the founder of WellMama CIC, she has dedicated 25 years to supporting women, mothers, families through pregnancy, childbirth, and early parenthood. Samara has personally guided hundreds of mothers and families,  through the journey of the Childbearing Year and Beyond, and curated, facilitated and presented several training programs for Maternal health care providers around the world.

Her work is rooted in ancestral wisdom, weaving together land tending, herbal lore, lay midwifery, and rites of passage to support women through the seasons of womanhood. With experience across three continents, Samara embraces cultural diversity and believes in nurturing the well-being of women and families through reciprocity, relationship and the remembrance of ancestral traditions, rites, rituals and ceremonies.

Ruth was born in Switzerland to a mixed race couple, Carol, her mother, a Cape Coloured woman from South Africa, and Justin, her father, an Irishman. They had begun their secretive relationship (illegal in the eyes of the South African law) in South Africa but her mother applied for refugee status in Switzerland and gave birth to her and her sister Kate there.

One way both her parents were a strong influence around birth was that they both had a very relaxed attitude about it. Her mother was born at home in Athlone, Cape Town, South African in 1950, attended by a local midwife on a bicycle like all women of colour were at that time in South Africa. Her father too, was the son of an Irish midwife and doctor, born at home, a farm boy, he had a strong affinity with horses and dogs and had observed these animals as well as sheep giving birth to their lambs.

She wanted to study to become a midwife after this experience but after researching her options in South Africa, she very quickly realised that the options were very different from what she imagined and had envisioned and so she put this plan to rest for a while. She went on to have 4 children, all born at home, all incredible experiences with deep learnings. Along with mothering her four beautiful children, San, Sai, Ayo and Kaira, she believe these first birth experiences, protected and safe, were her earliest and biggest teachers on this path.

She was one of the directors of The Compassionate Birth Project, a project aimed at addressing the abuse being experienced in South Africa’s labour wards. They taught compassion as a regular tutorial to 4th and 5th year medical students for 10 years, as well as running retreats for MOU (Midwife Obstetric Units) staff.

True Midwifery was born in 2014 after she left my abusive marriage and needed to find my way having only officially qualified as a CPM less than six months before. True Midwifery in many ways became her home as it offered shelter and an income through pregnancy care and birth attendance, her writing and my teaching. She is forever grateful to what True Midwifery has been for her over the years.

She have taught, given talks, run retreats and given workshops in South Africa, Italy, Portugal, Swaziland, Canada, Sardinia, Spain, Turkey, Malawi and Kenya.

She live in Kommetjie, a small seaside village near Cape Town, South Africa. You can read more about her on her webiste.

Isabelle Wolf is originally from Germany but based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

She passionate about bringing women together in circles and in intentional communities, working as a facilitator with nonviolent communication and as a translator/interpreter in my day job.

Whenever she finds the time, she also love to do crafts like weaving, as she believes that remembering ancient skills of hand-making our clothes is a meaningful part of her work in these times.

Isa works with WellMama as our primary communications assistant, so if you email us you will probably hear from her first! She also acts as a wonderful anchor in our circles and holds and incredibly loving and gentle presence.